Degree Disparity
In Atlanta, 76% of white residents over the age of 25 have earned a college degree while just 23% of their African-Americans peers have reached this same benchmark.
Since 2001, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has been working with Atlanta’s Southside communities to transform high-poverty city neighborhoods and help low-income families and children succeed. While some progress is being made, the gap between Atlanta’s haves and have-nots remains immense.
This report — which is a follow-up to Casey’s Changing the Odds: The Race for Results in Atlanta — focuses on promising policies and approaches that, if enacted on a larger scale, could help dismantle the systemic barriers that have kept too many Atlantans of color from reaching their full potential.
In Atlanta, forward-thinking organizations have been busy, forging pathways to education, housing, careers and wealth that can help build a brighter future for the city’s African-American residents. While these new pathways have spurred marginal gains, the push for equity is just beginning. And it’s a push that will require a larger legion of policymakers, public systems, business leaders, nonprofits and philanthropic institutions to band together and work together to help Atlantans of color move from merely surviving to thriving.